Monday, February 20, 2006
(This is perhaps the first installment of several
which are all based on the adventures of EXPAT MAN,
who dares to travel where everyone else is also travelling,
the only difference is he speaks 75 more words of Vietnamese)
Somewhere in Hoi An you sit in a café. It is kind of a boulangerie slash café. You spotted the Mille Feuille on the way in which will be complimented by a Café Macchiato. The waiter scoots past and a bunch of arms and eyebrows rise in an attempt to attract the young flustered man’s attention. You can’t resist a wry smile as you holler “em oi!” to which the young boy swivels on his heels and looks at you with a ready-to-serve smile.
“Cho anh mot ca phe va mot banh Mille Feuille,” you say with what you believe to be exquisite pronunciation.
As the waiter disappears, the other customers in the café are caught between resentment and respect. “Who is that man with such an alarming command of the local lingo? For he is no ordinary traveller.”
Yes – you are no “tourist” travelling through Vietnam from North to South, or vice versa, you are EXPAT MAN. You have no time for these trifling conversations about how to find the cheapest hotel in Hue or the price of butter in Laos. Would you be caught dead wearing a Red Bull T-shirt or fisherman trousers? Of course not.
Nor are you clutching “the Bible” (The Lonely planet) close to your chest. That is because EXPAT MAN knows where he is going. You have been here frequently. You have immersed yourself in the culture. In fact, this must be your favourite boulangerie in all of Indochina! You have no need for a trusty sidekick like Shoeshine Boy, who is giving the regular tourists the 20 question treatment. When Shoeshine Boy asks you from where you come from you scoff, “Vietnam!”
Earlier on perhaps the tourists saw you haggling in the market and although no one understood your Vietnamese the other tourists didn’t know that, they just looked in awe and admitted, “EXPAT MAN sure is one hell of a haggler.”
Back in the cafe as they admire your cultural know how, the waiter arrives back and serves you, with an honest effort of panache, a plate of fried bread with two poached eggs and a coconut shake.
“Xin moi anh (here you are),” he says with a big smile, before heading off to take the other customers orders in English.
Saying nothing, and too ashamed to look up as you realise your mangled Vietnamese phrasing is to blame, you begin to eat the eggs and sip your coconut shake and begin to wonder what will happen when you order the bill. Then again, perhaps you should just do the sensible thing and say it in English. Or at least improve your pronunciation in the meantime. Or perhaps you should try a bit of French as you are in a boulangerie, or is the right word patisserie?
Never you mind.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Get it while you can
Spoilt rotten and perfectly happy about it, Teddy de Burca Jnr explains why it would seem like too much hard work to go back home
In the past, which now seems so long ago I look at it as more like a previous life, I used to do many things. I used to cook regularly. I used to clean my house everyday. Lord – I even used to polish my own shoes and fix the punctures on my rusty old bicycle. What’s more, I definitely never paid anyone to shave my beard off or clean my ears.
But Vietnam spoils a man, and perhaps a woman too. Now, I am living in La-la Land. A sort of personalised Utopia, a place I always dreamt existed, but thought I would never find; where the lazy man lives like an idle prince, where the dishes can be left in the sink and be magically washed overnight, where you can go for a coffee and walk away with clean shoes. It is a land that positively encourages me not to lift a finger in the domestic sense. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying that’s how it is.
Whenever friends of mine are packing up and leaving Vietnam they prattle on about what they’ll miss – the friends, the culture and the way she might look at you on a soft Spring day while hurtling through the traffic. And all of that is all very well, but let’s get down to the meat of the matter: what they will also miss, perhaps more at first, is having their shoes shined for VND2,000; getting their house cleaned by a maid for $30 or $40 a month; the fact that they cannot afford to have a slap up dinner (or lunch) whenever they feel like it.
In Vietnam, for people working full time with kids, there is the joy of having a nanny, a cook and a maid all rolled into one for a very affordable fee. The only drawback might be after spending so much time with the super-nanny your kid will pick up Vietnamese so fast you’ll come home one day to find the little whippersnapper gossiping with the housewives and maids down the street about how much you spend on take away pizza every month and you won’t understand a single word.
One friend of mine left Vietnam for a distant land called Japan. His life was pretty much turned back to front. From a huge cheap villa he ended up in an overpriced matchbox apartment. The price of coffee multiplied itself by about 20 times. Suddenly he didn’t have so much free time and he couldn’t afford sushi lunches (ironic eh?)*.
When I did a rapid-fire survey on friends it revealed a host of lifestyle habits that could not be realised back home: having a whole wardrobe tailor made clothes, getting a weekly four-dollar foot rub, being invited to drink with complete strangers (accepting is optional), never having to make your own bed, being able to afford, and find taxis, or if you can’t, at least a xe om (motorbike taxi).
Of course, we all have our paths to follow, and for many foreigners there’ll come a day when they head for the hills, but in the meantime, you should be savouring these moments and abundance of pleasures, because, I promise you, after you leave you’ll miss it all, or at least not be so happy about facing the housework back home.
If you still don’t believe me then I’ll leave you with my emphatic closing argument: imagine vacuuming the house.
A frightening thought, if I say so myself.
*Apparently that isn't true (see comments by Elliott). That character is sort of composite character of few people who went to Japan. One teacher friend who went to Tokyo thought naively things would work as easily as Hanoi - arrive, hang out, drink bia, meet folk, get work, stay - but he lasted 10 days, his meagre savings chewed up by the Tokyo prices and he complained he didn't even get a chance to eat sushi!
A very brief survey of reasons people like living in Vietnam:
From RR of England:
“The fact that I am relatively large here - get to feel like a big man”
“Lots of very pretty girls giggling and flirting with me in that very cute Vina way”
“The cost of living of course applies to a wide range of benefits beyond just eating out- eg. massages, weekends away”
“Random strangers will invite me to eat or drink with them (and the food is healthier and better)”
“I have never been ill in Vietnam”
“The weather, climate is of course infinitely better”
“I am much safer in Vietnam”
“Get to go to Model parties, parties at the Italian Ambassador's house”
From SJC of Australia
“Endless bia and bun cha and bun rieu cua”
“Never having to make my own bed (or clean the house!)”
“A vibrant food scene – street, other Vina, international … you name it… great food going on at all levels “
“Possibility of having my entire wardrobe custom made”
“Being able to drive from my house to Laos (or Cambodia or the northern mountains or … wherever)”
“Only a hop skip and a jump from Bangkok (where I hear they do quite good liver transplants at a fraction of the price in the west!)”
“My employer’s deeply relaxed attitude to results”
From PM of Australia
“Riding my motorbike around”
“Eating Vietnamese food nearly every day”
“Having massages whenever I want, without the fear of budgetary retribution”
“Paying double for a shoe shine, just to make myself feel like a responsible global citizen”
“Not paying tax...”
“Catching taxis, with the same freedom associated with having a massage”
“Watch the latest DVDs for nuthin”
“You can be sillier when drunk and not get punched”
“Shootin the shit with Jackie Chan”
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Admit it - sharing is caring
When it comes to eating out with a group of friends, Westerners, or at least Teddy de Burca Jnr.’s family, could learn a lot from Asian style dining
When I go back to sunny, cosmopolitan Ireland and eat out with my family or friends, or when one ventures east to visit me here, while we collectively peruse the menu in a restaurant I often hear the line “I’m having the veal” or whatever dish tickles their fancy.
It always jars slightly; every year a little more. In fact, I’d go as far as to say after over half a decade in Vietnam, where sharing is indeed caring at the dinner table, it sounds downright selfish.
Sure, I know the norm back home is for everyone to choose their own starter and a main course. If someone makes too much noise about how good the dish is you can always ask for some, but all people do is cut off a little corner of the tasty morsel and pass it over on a side plate.
The attitude seems to be why share a dinner when you have exactly what you want in front of you? Get your own steak. After all, you’re the idiot that ordered the green bean salad.
Even at home plates are served individually with seconds left in the pot. It is every man and woman for themselves. The quicker you eat, the more seconds you get to shovel on your plate. The biggest pig gets the most swill, would say my uncle, who is a man that I should add outgrew his bed thanks to this belief. Every single one of us would eat with a protective arm curled around the plate lest someone try to pinch your last spud.
So what a relief it has become, and a way of life too, in Asia with everything in the middle and everyone sharing. Now, no matter what kind of restaurant I go to – Vietnamese, Japanese, Italian, Indian or Thai (Ok, I’ll admit this philosophy doesn’t wash with sandwiches, hamburgers or kebabs) everyone just orders a few dishes and everything is plonked in the middle to be tasted and shared.
Furthermore, new research by dieticians claims that sharing food means you eat less helping you stay trim and healthy, even though you might feel like you’re eating more. You naturally adjust your consumption to those who are eating with you.
Of course, there’s no persuading some people. Recently my old friend from county Fingal, just north of Dublin, came out to see what the fuss was all about in Southeast Asia and we went out with a group of folk to an Italian joint. People did the usual and ordered salads, bruschetta, pizza, pasta and a couple of carafes of wine to be shared around, but my dear visitor was having none of it. Slapping the menu shut and staring the waitress dead in the eye, he said: “I’ll have the beef steak and a beer” and the unsaid subtext was there for all to see: he wasn’t planning on sharing it. It was, I believe, his loss.